The Woman Who Lived is the ‘Greet’ portion of this two part
Meet and Greet of Ashildr, building on the ‘Meet’ from The Girl Who Died.
Ashildr is the central figure of the two episodes and will obviously figure
prominently into the arc of the season. As usual with arc-centric stories, the
plot suffers.
Although dressed up in most impressive leonine splendor, the
alien of the week is more disposable and afterthought than ever. His only
reason for being is to throw in an alien presence that New Who feels obligated
to provide each time out regardless of how ridiculous it is becoming.
However, it just doesn’t matter, Gary, because Ashildr is
the story; and what a story she is.
Ashildr is a tale of heartbreak, and one told to the
Doctor’s shame.
To understand it better we must revisit the end of the
previous episode. In The Girl Who Died the Doctor looks in a barrel, sees the
face he has ‘chosen,’ remembers having saved (at Donna’s insistence) the person
who once bore that face, and decides he is tired of losing people; decides he
can break any laws he wants; decides he is going to save Ashildr. Except he
doesn’t save Ashildr; Ashildr is already dead; what he does is resurrect her.
The Doctor is not God, despite New Who flirting with the
notion that he is a god, and when he does decide to play god it usually turns
to a tragic end. Having selfishly denied Ashildr a natural and honorable death,
the Doctor curses her with immortality. And then he walks away without even a
word of encouragement or advice.
“I tell you that leaving this place would be death itself,”
Ashildr tells the Doctor back in The Girl Who Died. As The Woman Who Lived
opens Ashildr cannot even remember that place, her village.
“Who’s Ashildr?”
She cannot even remember her own name.
“I call myself Me,” she tells the Doctor. “All the other
names I chose died with whoever knew me. Me is who I am now. No one’s mother,
daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone.”
Ashildr is dead despite the Doctor, or more accurately,
because of the Doctor.
Doctor: “Oh Ashildr, daughter of Einarr, what happened to
you?”
Ashildr: “You did, Doctor. You happened.”
Ashildr has suffered 800 years of sorrow and poverty and
pain and loneliness; 800 years “of adventure” as she describes it, “enough to
fill a library if you write it down.” That library is full of the misery that
has been her living death. More poignant, though, are the pages that are
missing. “When things get really bad,” Ashildr explains, “I tear the memories
out.” Whole swathes of her being are missing; the good along with the bad.
Some of the worst, however, she retains. Like the agonizing
death of her children. “I keep that entry,” Ashildr explains, “to remind me not
to have any more.” She says this with no feeling, almost bored. Eight hundred
years of weary existence has taught her to suppress her emotions. Yet how she
must yearn to live; to love; to feel. She is not a Cyberman; she remains human
despite her hybrid nature.
And so she begs the Doctor to take her with him; to take her
away from this mortal plane she can no longer bear. Maisie Williams lends grace
to the show and imbues Ashildr with a depth of character beneath her bland
façade. She would make an excellent addition to the TARDIS crew. Oh yeah, the
Doctor already has a companion. Clara is barely in this episode and I don’t
even miss her. The lack of clarity and definition in Clara would be made up for
by Ashildr’s company. Clara is a piecemeal character re-imagined to suit the
whims of each season, in contrast to the fully formed person who is Ashildr.
But the Doctor selfishly and indefensibly refuses Ashildr’s
pleas and so we will have to content ourselves with this beautiful two story
arc and whatever scraps of her presence that are in store for the rest of the
season.
Because the Doctor unreasonably refuses Ashildr’s most
reasonable request she decides to throw her lot in with the lion king. What follows
is the requisite alien plot of magical amulets and dangerous portals and death
and destruction. It is neatly packaged, however, in an imaginative and
entertaining highwayman story line, and the gallows humor is greatly
appreciated.
As chaos erupts around her, as strange spaceships
materialize, as a mysterious planet appears in the sky, as fireballs rain down
on the innocent rabble, Ashildr re-discovers her humanity. Luckily Ashildr
still has the second Mire repair chip that the Doctor left with her back in The
Girl Who Died. The amulet that somehow killed the unfortunate Sam is
miraculously counteracted by the Mire tech. Sam resurrects, the aliens in the
sky kill Leandro, the portal closes, and the powerful amulet is suddenly
nothing more than a hunk of metal.
And still the Doctor refuses to take Ashildr with him. At
this point I am thinking Ashildr is better off. She is not one to fawn over the
Doctor and she is destined for greater things than merely becoming the Doctor’s
caretaker.
With her soul restored she faces the Doctor across a tavern
table. Ashildr has proven herself to be a bigger person than the Doctor. She
has outgrown him.
With insight greater than the Doctor’s, Ashildr proclaims, “Enemies
are never a problem; it’s your friends you have to watch out for.”
Ashildr has experienced the devastation that the Doctor often
leaves in his wake, and she makes a vow to become “the patron saint of the
Doctor’s leftovers.” I can think of no
better defender of this world, Gary, than Ashildr.
